Burj Al Arab Hotel

The Hotel That Began on a Restaurant Napkin

In October 1993, a British architect named Tom Wright was sitting at the Dubai Offshore Sailing Club when he spotted a dhow sailing across the water. He picked up a pen and sketched something on a napkin. That sketch, handed to Dubai’s rulers, became the Burj Al Arab, the building that, more than any other single structure, redefined what people thought Dubai could be. It took two years to build the artificial island and another three years to build the hotel itself on top of it. The island required 230 concrete piles, each 40 metres long, topped with a concrete raft weighing 70,000 tonnes.

The first sketch actually placed the hotel on the beach. Someone noticed this would affect nearby communities and suggested moving it offshore. Good call.

The building opened in December 1999, and within a few years it had become one of the most photographed structures on earth. The “seven-star hotel” designation it is often given is technically self-assigned and not part of any official rating system, which is the kind of bold claim Dubai tends to get away with.

Getting In If You Are Not Staying

You cannot walk up to the front door without a reservation. The hotel sits on its own island connected to Jumeirah Beach by a private causeway, and there is a security checkpoint. To get past it, you either need a room booking (starting around AED 4,000 per night, roughly $1,100) or a dining or bar reservation.

For most visitors, the afternoon tea at Sahn Eddar is the right entry point. It costs around AED 520 to 560 per person depending on what you order, includes tea and a spread of Arabic and Western pastries, and takes place in the jaw-dropping 180-metre atrium, the interior of the V-shaped “sail” that gives the building its silhouette. The atrium is the largest in the world. Looking up from a table at Sahn Eddar, understanding that the structure surrounding you is essentially hollow and that the interior height equals the Eiffel Tower, produces a genuine sense of scale that photographs entirely fail to capture.

The Skyview Bar on the 27th floor offers drinks with views of the Palm Jumeirah and the Dubai coastline; prices there start around AED 650 per person for the Sky Tea package, with an additional AED 100 per table for window seats. You are paying partly for access and partly for the view; the cocktails are good but not revelatory.

The Restaurants Worth Knowing

Al Mahara is the underwater seafood restaurant, reached via a simulated submarine ride from the lobby. Floor-to-ceiling aquarium windows look onto marine life while you eat. Whether this is thrilling or gimmicky depends entirely on your disposition. The food is serious and the produce is excellent; mains run between AED 380 and AED 530. Book weeks ahead.

Al Muntaha sits on the 27th floor on the outer edge of the “sail” and offers fine dining with sweeping views of the Arabian Gulf. This is where the cooking most justifiably matches the price tag.

Bab Al Yam is the beachfront option, serving Mediterranean-style food with Gulf views. The dinner buffet runs AED 525 per person, which makes it one of the more accessible entry points for a full meal experience.

Sahn Eddar, the lobby-level atrium restaurant, does the afternoon tea and also hosts live entertainment in the evenings. If you are visiting once and want to understand the building from the inside, this is the room to sit in.

The Rooms

There are 201 suites, all arranged on two floors (each is a duplex). The least expensive entry-level suite runs around $1,100 per night; the Royal Suites at the top of the building cost considerably more. Every suite comes with a butler, a private check-in experience, complimentary access to Wild Wadi Waterpark next door, and roughly 1,790 square metres of 24-carat gold leaf distributed throughout the interior of the hotel at large.

The rooms are enormous, the service is attentive to a degree that can feel slightly performative, and the views from the upper floors over the Gulf are genuinely worth the cost, once. This is a one-time experience hotel rather than a place you return to for comfort. If you are splitting the cost between two people for a single night’s occasion, it is defensible. As a repeating travel habit, it makes less sense.

What Most Guides Do Not Mention

The Burj Al Arab has run a Turtle Rehabilitation Sanctuary since 2004. More than 1,950 hawksbill turtles have been released back into the wild through the programme, which operates year-round. Hotel guests can arrange to visit the sanctuary. It is a genuinely good programme and a notable contrast to the hotel’s more visible indulgences.

There is also the helipad on the 28th floor, which was used for a tennis match between Roger Federer and Andre Agassi in 2005. It is occasionally used for other publicity stunts and makes a reasonable conversation piece.

Practical Notes

Dress code for the restaurants and bars is smart casual to formal. Swimwear and shorts are not appropriate. Under-21s are not permitted in the bars; the minimum age for the Skyview Lounge is 16.

All reservations should be made well in advance, especially for Al Mahara. Jumeirah’s official site is the most reliable booking channel. The hotel does not take walk-ins of any kind at any point of the day.

Jumeirah Beach is immediately adjacent to the hotel island and is public, so you can stand on the beach and photograph the building without a reservation. The classic angle is from the beach looking northeast, with the structure reflected in the water at low tide. Sunrise produces better light than sunset for this shot.

The Surrounding Area

Souk Madinat Jumeirah, a few minutes’ drive south, is a built-to-look-old retail and restaurant complex with canals, abras, and an attractive visual coherence that somewhat compensates for its being a modern construction. The Madinat Amphitheatre hosts live events through the cooler months (October to April). The restaurants and bars within the Madinat have some of the best views of the Burj Al Arab from the outside.

Wild Wadi Waterpark is directly next door to the hotel and is genuinely good. Hotel guests get complimentary access; day tickets run around AED 299 per adult in 2025. If you have children or simply want to spend a day on water slides with a view of a famous building, this is not a bad afternoon.

The Burj Al Arab remains what it was designed to be: a statement rather than just a hotel. Whether the statement interests you is a matter of taste. But the engineering is extraordinary, the interior is unlike anything else, and even the most sceptical visitors tend to acknowledge that standing inside the atrium produces something they did not expect.